Building a new house in Palo Alto

Building a new house in Palo Alto

Monday, October 1, 2012

Welcome to our home! (Framing, Part 1)

Cisco, with his keen cocker spaniel guard dog instincts, has managed to find the front door.

That was quick, eh? Yes, that's the beauty of framing. In a matter of days you go from a shanty town to the Taj Mahal. Suddenly we have something that resembles a house and if you're a clever dog like Cisco, you can begin to imagine the doors and windows.

A skeleton crew builds the guest room while we wait for the rest of the lumber to arrive.

Overall, the framing stage is one of the most thrilling phases of the construction process. Each day the house looks different and it's exciting to finally see your house plans spring to life. We initially got off to a slow start (which I barked about because I have the patience of a 2-year-old) because we were waiting for a lumber drop. To keep things moving our general contractor picked up some lumber himself, but we limped along until the full order arrived.

Lesson 1: Construction is takingoff in the Bay Area. Order your supplies well in advance.

Lumber is pre-cut, sorted by size and ready to fly up into the walls.

Once the lumber order arrived the house practically built itself. Okay, it was a little more complicated than that, but the team sure made it look easy. With the exception of the skeleton crew photo above, all the pictures in this blog post are from a single day of construction. One of the brilliant investments that our contractor makes is ordering pre-cut lumber. It's a few cents more per foot but it's cut to size before delivery. This makes it easier for the crew to focus on building and cuts down (yes, pun intended) on frame day mistakes.